By me, and with gorgeous art from my friend Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
“What do you mean, you decided to become a masseur?”
We were on our way home shortly after the run in with the Wringlers, me peddling slow on my bike, and Warbell strolling lightly (or as lightly as he could) beside me. He was smiling, obviously happy to get away from the cocktail party. Still, despite his attempts to avoid drinking the champagne, his breath reeked of alcohol. And fish. He had eaten a lot of fish.
“It’s the perfect job,” he said, and his breath was so bad I could almost see drunk tuna swimming before my eyes. “I can get to know people, talk to them, on a closer level than just as a curiosity or as a celebrity in town.”
“But your arms!” I said. “They are so small!”
“They are about the size of human arms,” Warbell said. “Precisely one of the reasons why this job is a good fit.”
“You only have two fingers on each hand, and those claws…”
“Can be trimmed,” Warbell finished. “And there are techniques to get around the lack of fingers. I have been talking with some of the best masseurs in the nation. Several have expressed interest in training me.”
“It’s absolutely crazy,” I said. “You’ll crush people! On accident!”
We made a turn, and Warbell nearly took out a stop sign. An oncoming car with an ogling driver also made him slow and move behind my bike for a few steps, but then once the car had passed he moved up next to me again.
“I am very gentle by nature,” he said. “Except for when I used to hunt. I wasn’t gentle back then. But I have changed.”
“That,” I said. “That right there. You’re a meat-eater. Meat-eaters shouldn’t be kneading the flesh of… of animals that you might think about eating. It’s like you’re playing with your food.”
Because of increased traffic, Warbell tried to walk up on the sidewalk, but his weight shattered the cement and broke the curb. For a while he walked back behind my bike again, which made me feel uncomfortable, as if Warbell was hunting my trusty five-speed like a predator.
“I don’t think of humans as my food,” he said. “Ugh, that taste. I wish I had never eaten anything in this awful world at all. It’s going to be the end of me.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, so I pedaled in silence, watching him in the rearview mirror I had attached to my bike handles. He had his head down, and I could hear him breathing heavily, puffing and snorting in a strange way. Along with the nasty dinosaur breath, I also picked up a stink as if an army of sopping wet mutts were walking by in a parade. Bizarrely, I could have sworn I heard the flustered trumpet of an elephant out of nowhere, and I just assumed Warb must have cussed in dinosaur pidgin or something. He was also slowing down. Given that he wasn’t running very quickly, I didn’t think he could be tired out already, but something seemed to be wrong. I slowed and stopped near a field, and Warbell stopped, too.
“Hey,” I said. “Problems?”
Warbell jerked and pawed at the ground, eyes blinking, lips working uncomfortably over his huge teeth. Then, in an incredibly burst of sound and stink and fury, he vomited all over the road. Chunks and streams of bile rolled and swam across the pavement. Warbell snapped his jaws together a few times, looking around.
“It’s no good,” he said. “No, leave me alone. Probably I can’t do anything to help anybody anyway, and I’ll just perish, helpless and alone. I shouldn’t have gotten you mixed up with this as well. And so many people are going to keep dying.”
There was a haunted look in Warbell’s eyes—anger, fear, frustration, rage. Then he made a quick movement, spun on one foot, and dashed out into a nearby field.